Related Stories

“The president wants to continue to keep the sanctions in place, and I think the president’s made it clear how the Russians could have the sanctions lifted and how he could have the sanctions taken away,” he added.

The sanctions against Russia stem from the Putin regime’s 2014 invasion of Crimea in the Ukraine and were to remain in place until there was some accord settling the conflict between the Ukraine and Russia. That still hasn’t happened in a war that’s claimed 10,000 lives and likely caused the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014.

On the campaign trail, Trump had intimated that he may consider revising the sanctions. Earlier this week, Cohn said that the president was “looking at” the sanctions on Russia, according to Politico.

Advertisement - story continues below

However, Cohn’s statement Friday seemed to make it clear that the administration was not going to ease sanctions on Russia.

Given that the mainstream media seems to vacillate between saying that Trump is simply a witless Putin pawn and that the president is a really flagrant, witless Putin pawn, the news must have been met with some consternation among the chattering class. After all, it’s taken as an article of faith that the president does whatever the Kremlin wants.

Of course, Cohn’s statement isn’t going to stop the media from its typical Boris-and-Natasha reverie about whatever new link they say that they’ve discovered. It does show, however, just how tenuous the association is, and how the president is far from a Kremlin pawn.